Adam Ross: A story of love and loss

There’s little so gripping as a love story between a soldier and his childhood sweetheart.

Pfc. Adam Corey Ross lived to propose to Rachel “BB” Lowery. He died 7,500 miles from home in an ambush in Wardak Province, Afghanistan, protecting the same dreams of his “brothers” and countrymen.

“He loved BB and he told us in April he was going to propose to her when he came home. That is what is breaking my heart and it makes the hurt that much more,” said his mother, Amanda. “I was so mad at God for taking my son … I have such pain in my heart.”

Mike Lowery wears the pain his daughter is feeling. “Adam was the kind of young man every father wanted his daughter to marry. I couldn’t have handpicked a better person,” Lowery said, as tears streamed down his face.

Interestingly, Adam’s father, George, thought the same thing about BB when she and Adam were in junior high school and they were frequently together as friends. “When I saw B.B. with him back then, I thought ‘he should be careful, because one day she is going to make some boy very happy.’ ”

Adam was home-schooled grades 9-10-11. He went to Byrnes to graduate in December to enlist in his career passion – becoming a soldier in the U.S. military. That, Adam figured, would lead him to the Rangers and then Special Forces. BB went to Greer High School where she played basketball and graduated in June. Their lives were distancing their relationship, but their hearts had already found their match.

Amanda Ross, Adam’s mother, had suffered the loss of her parents in a dizzying six-month period. Her father died last November and her mother in April. It was at her father’s funeral that Adam and BB would reconnect. Adam sent BB an email and they soon became boyfriend and girlfriend. “Their love was pure and sweet,” Amanda said.

The obituary reads, “Also surviving are his fiancée, Rachel Elizabeth Lowery of Lyman …” “We call her that because she had become a member of our family,” Amanda said. BB was told of Adam’s pending proposal in the past week. George, Amanda and BB flew to Delaware last Tuesday night to receive Adam’s body. “I had to tell her (what Adam planned) because it’s what Adam would have wanted,” Amanda said.

Adam usually got what he wanted, his parents said. Ever since he was two years old and saw his father in military dress coming off a ship in Norfolk, Va., he was focused on the military. “I think what got him so into it was his first recollection of me was in the military because I saw him so infrequently. I would be away for eight months and he would forget who I was and what I looked like at that young of an age,” George said.

George smiled widely when asked if Adam was a “mama’s boy” or “daddy’s boy.” Amanda emphatically said, “He was definitely a daddy’s boy. He loved his father.”